Wooden_Replica

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I have always felt the following things would go WORLDS towards fixing EA.

Change the passives to passive +def that stacks with the toggles, add a small per target +DEF to energy drain just the ice armor drain. Finnally change energy cloak to something usefull.

[/ QUOTE ]agreed

just 5 inf here, what would be ideal would be integrate the tech into CoX directly,
in addition to the existing text channels, add in a voice team channel as a suppliment, with the user able to enable/ disable it

you have to give the 15 their cred's, I think the last few issues have been particularly strong, not bad for only 15 people, kinda makes you wonder what they'll be able to do, now that they got more people, and keep in mind, while they have gotten in some new blood for this issue, it was/is the 15 who have done a good chunk of the grunt work here

hey doc now that you defined what Mental Manipulation will look like, what will Electric Assault look like?

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Neat. And first post after a mad scientist

Edit: Uh. Holy [censored]? PSYCHIC SHOCKWAVE? Are you kidding?

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even worse, note Psychic Scream is in the secondary not the primary, which means Psychic Blast gets Aim as well,


Build Up and Psychic Shockwave...along with Drain Psyche for lots of +regen and +recovery. And what looks to be a %-for-Confusion damage toggle. With about 20% more hit points than a Dominator and higher damage.

Yeah, I'm not seeing any balance problems with this set if the powers are directly ported.

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When they announced details of the Hollows changes, the general reaction was blah, in part with no offense to WW, it wasn't that the changes weren't welcome, but everybody is more excited about the VEATs and Power Proliferation.
So the question begs, what could've caused more excitement over the Hollows.
And I came up wit this,
simply make it a shared PvE zone,
that is give villains access to it, with their own unique contacts and story arcs seperate from the heroes. with a lot of the missions geared towards actually helping the Outcasts and Trolls against the PPD, Legacy Chain etcs. Instead of defeating Frostfire for instance, you must rescue him from the Legacy Chain, and must defeat a comparable EB Legacy Chain boss instead.

a few questions here,
Purple IO sets, and IO's in general,
any chance of seeing more of these in issue 12?

Controller and Defender new Debuff/buff/ heal sets
is it safe to assume they will get different sets? one of the long standing issues between the two AT's is the large overlap in sets, controllers having a unique set( at least heroside), and defenders getting a 2nd one could help differentuate the two AT's

Any new trials, tfs, or sfs with the new zones?

Since the VEATs will be getting some unique costume pieces, will Kelds be getting that Sash NPC kelds all seem to have

Based on what little has been said, it sounds like the new content will be in shared pve zones, with seperate arcs for both sides and not co-op, which i am fine with

content wise the 35-50 new zone, when combined with the RWZ, would it be possible for redsiders to avoid Grandville for the most part, while focusing on contact missions

Will the midnight squad give out goodies in some form or fashion just like Vanguard?

Will their be any content or activities geared towards 50's?

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The only thing the poster left out about CoH/CoV is that the powers you get as you level are game changing as opposed to other games where the skills/attributes you get a enhancements.

This applies to both MMOs and solitare type games. Getting a bonus to damage to your sword or spell is nice but since mobs just get more HPs after 10 levels of that is isn't as exciting as all that. Same goes for more armor, etc.

In CoH when you get a new power you usually get some crazy new animation and the power usually has multiple effects you can often use in different ways. So you not only have more power but you LOOK different using it and may start playing the entire game slightly differently.

Powers like Ice Slick or Tier 9 powers can change the game a LOT. Example Dom/Controllers: 32 levels into the game and suddenly you have a powerful pet(s) and can play very differently. Yeah I'll take that over 5 more pts damage to all attacks any day.

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one of things i don't think anyone mentioned is powers, how many other MMO's you have multiple versions of what is essentually the same exact power, but scaled up for level, ya my primary may only have 9 powers in it, but it beats worrying about getting flares 1, flares 2, flares 3 and so on

I got guild wars for x-mas as a side game, its quest system is deifinitely less friendly than CoX's, and i definitely miss having vertical movement

Let’s be honest here, lets not pretend no one saw this coming, with Cryptic taking on Marvel Online, it did kind of create a conflict of interest for them, not impossible mind you, but a difficult position. I’m sure that’s one of the major drivers here.

For NcSoft’s part, the CoX is a successful sold franchise, for any MMO that isn’t WoW. I can actually see them wanting to invest more in the game to expand the subscriber base.
Marketing wise, this might mean they may be more aggressive.

Looking in my crystal ball, I’d predict,
-Some sort of NcSoft Station Pass, a sort of like the Sony Station Pass.
-Them continuing the free issues, but I would expect within a year or two, we’ll see some sort of major paid expansion( that expands the game to the extent CoV did, rather than to the extent a standard issue does)
-If their willing to put more resources in it, take a look at some of things where City is lacking w/o taking away where it is strong, example is pvp.

Now actions for the community, It would be nice if we had some sort of far well party at pocket d, as a send off to Statesman and anyone else remaining at Cryptic.

I have to say I'm REALLY curious now,
back of my head says its a major content revision
but I say to myself no way

I just had a horid thought, has anyone fought any of the Arachnoid EB's on test?

I didn’t see it either, anyway

-Honestly its news to me that players hate the SG Bases, I don’t think I have ran into anyone who hates them, and to be honest, if anything, any complaints tend to be along different lines.

-Not enough functionality, people seem to like the existing functionality , but generally would like more, be it machines that dispense inspirations other than greens, or whatever. Also, people may have more fun if some of the non-active items were more interactive, example, a player clicks on a chair, their toon automatically does an emote of them sitting in the chair.

-Base Raids, this may have been what he has been referring to, people tend to be either solid base raids or solid anti-base raids

-Rent/ Prestige, now this aspect people do tend to dislike, I think most people understand about earning prestige to get stuff, although the prices are sometimes a bit much, but the rent aspect is what gets people turned off on bases, a few points here, the Avengers, X-Men, JLA, Titans, etc., generally speaking while its not mentioned too often, either the government, some foundation, or a wealthy member funds/ donates their HQ’s, and in case of some of the JLA’s HQs such as the sattilites and the moonbase, its was a non issue.

-Simple suggestion here, which might help out small groups
-SG Missions where the SG performs some favor for either Arachnos or Longbow, in return for a base item. For example a hero SG can perform some mission for Longbow, and in return they will give the SG a teleporter unit. Sort of the same functionality as the newspaper mish, with the difficulty of the item affecting the difficulty of the mission.

-A second SG TF/SF, Arachnos/Longbow or some other party, agrees to fund the SG( pay the rent), if they complete some sort of TF/SF for them, or alternatively they’ll pay a months rent in return for doing 1-5 missions for them.

while your at it, any chance of a dark control set ;-).
The coolest single target hold in the game, and a dominator doesn't have it;-), the injustice!!!

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All MMs were told they would receive a slight buff with i7, aimed at PVP but useful in PVE also. Does anyone on test know what this buff is?

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Actually, it's not aimed at PvP -- it's a general change. Useful equally everywhere.

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Anything a little less cryptic? Can you tell us what it is?

I'm mixed feelings about mez resists having played a variety of AT's,
My Scrappers( 1 dm/regen & 1 kat/da), & WS( in dwarf mode), can for all intents and purposes ignore mez effects, and
very rarely get mezed
My Defenders, mezes are the bane of their existence
My Dominator, PVE is managable, but in PVP I fight heroes who either ignore my mezes, or are prey to my mezes, unless I can build a mez effect fast enough, and keep in mind CC is my primary dmg mitigation.

So what we have is a number of AT's which can to some extent ignore mez effects, others who are breakfree addicts, since otherwise their dead, and others who depend on on mez effects. Just my thought perhaps the devs should revisit the current system of mez's and mez resistiance & protection.
-Give all AT's access to mez resistiance/ protection in the form of a new Power Pool called Discipline, each power in it would
be an inherient resist to one or more mez type, with the 'weaker' mez types like immobilize be at the lower end of the set,
with holds and more exotic type of mez effects like confuse & fear being at the high end of the set, I know mez resistiance is
spread out through out the power pools, but I'd rather their all concentrated in a single set, and maybe also include taunt & placate resistiance in the set as well.
-On all powers that offer mez resists, allow for slotting for magnitude of resistiance, powers should be balanced so that
a melee with both the appropiate Discipline power and the mez resist they get in their defense set both 3 slotted have the
same mez resist as they have today. What this translates to is that even, non-melee's will be able to get some mez resistiance
and melee's will still be able to have better mez resists
-On mez powers, allow for slotting of magnitude of the holds to increase the magnitude
-Combine all mez resist & mez protection effects, so accelerate metabolism will offer mez resists, and if the mez resist power
is still active after the mez, the duration is shortened
-Give dominators and controllers an alternate power in each of their primaries, that debuffs mez resistiance, possibly two alternate powers, a single target version and an AE version, possibly with each dominator or controller being able to debuff
only one type of mez effect which their set has.

I think a big part of it is not having a suger daddy or a suger momma to finance your alts is the biggest thing, with that said,
Drops do seem less frequent
And if you go around in SG mode all the time, at some point,
you will collect less infamy, in order to get prestige. With that said, Exemping is a wonderful thing, or keep yourself in debt for a while, assuming your not in SG mode, you still collect full infamy while in debt.

one question Gilgamesh, so where are you going from here? Any chance of seeing your work elsewhere?

Wull we be seeing dmg in acid arrow as per the description, also consistant with the single target controller holds your measuring it against?

I like the set, the animations tend to lag a little bit,
would likea couple things clarified though
Ice Arrow's description does dmg and yet it doesn't, is it a typo or a bug? Its fine either way to me
Whats the strength of the debuff's in it? for instance is flash arrow compariable to -accuracy to RI & DN or to what is it Device's smoke grenade
Its kind of difficult to tell, but some of the powers seem like click anchor powers, any clarification here?
But otherwise a very promising set, I look forward to seeing it on live. Good Job

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If you think that no one will care because controllers can do it all better think again. Fulcrum shifted nuke/nova/blackstar is a sight to behold.

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It's really not that impressive. It just SEEMS impressive because you're used to your attacks sucking all the time.

It takes me 4 seconds to animate Thunderous Blast. In that time a Fire Blaster can FireBall/FireBreath. I'll get ~37 brawls (55.556 * 0.666 = Blaster Damage) if all three ticks hit, and he'll get 29.5 brawls. That's 80% of my damage and he can do it every 10 seconds. If I get any less than 3 ticks we're doing the same damage.

Is it a "sight to behold" whenever a Fire Blaster runs into a group and decimates it? No. It's expected. The only reason it seems cool when a Defender does it is because the rest of the time your damage is a bit sad.

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But this is where you see the biggest difference in defender primaries, some primaries like dark or rad, can do this with a fair amount of safety( sacirficing 33% dmg for more safety) and others like empathy that are taking almost as much a risk as blasters with much less reward( 33% less dmg). if that fireblaster didn't get everything by the time he finishes doing that fireball-firebreath combo, he's dead, by allowing the emp to fort him/herself it would justify them having 33% blaster dmg.

A couple examples of emps vs. non-emp defenders, first was the respec, 8 man team, with 2 emps, 1 dark( me), 1 bubbler, 2 tanks( 1 was fire), 1 ice blaster, & 1 mind controller. As you can see not a team with a lot of 'dmg dealers', even better 1 emp was 33, 1 tank was 32, the bubbler and controller was 24, the rest of us were in the 29-30 range, Even better. The 33 emp sked the 2nd emp which I thought was a bit weird, considering as far as i can tell both were 'pure healers'. We got the through the door mish at a very slow pace, as well as making our way to the reacter. A pace that somewhat concerned me, I suggested that the lead emp sk the bubbler instead since pure healers suffer less being unsked than the rest of us, and I knew dispersion bubble should be more effective with him higher, plus I know he has slotted his attacks. Needless to say, our tempo picked up going through the waves. The point is, had we left the 2nd emp sked to the 1st one, we would have died, eventually we would have been overwelmed. The pure healers couldn't contribute to dmg. the bubbler was to low until he was sked to do amy dmg, and the mind controller well, it was difficult for him to manage control even sked much less dmg against what we were facing. That left 2 tanks, 1 ice blaster, & 1 dark rad defender to deal dmg against to what was for most of us +4's or +5. My point is that both emp's would've provided much more support had they at least a few of their attacks, b/c in this situation and others, their healing wou;d've not been able to keep up. Don't get me wrong they filled their role fine, but there are other ways to support your team outside of healing.

2nd example, while I was doing the respec, my wife was teamed up with someone from our SG on a pickup team. As i was listoning on TS Iheard our SG mate complain that the defender on the team wasn't doing her job( no I should add my SG is primarily scrappers with a few other AT's), so my wife joined with her emp. Being curious I asked my wife to look up what kind of defender the 'bad healer' was, as I expected it was a Rad not an Emp, and then she understood why the defender was a 'bad healer'( my main is a Rad Dark), now I have no idea how the defender was doing in the debuffing dept since I was too busy to watch. But I was saddened by the fact that both my wife( her main is an emp) and my sg mate( his main is a scrapper) both assumed since they saw a blue shield. they assumed they had an emp, and they both have 50's. I also know its easy for non-debuffers not to realize the impact of debuffage until its either its gone. their facing a debuffer in PVP, or their facing an AV( they tend to think that the mobs aren't as tough as they thought)

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Only in the mid-game is a defender such a pivotal part of a team that the death of the defender results in a team wipe. In the early game, defenders simply don't make that much of a difference, so the team is fighting within reasonable boundaries. In the late game, the defender isn't needed as much since everyone can take care of themselves at this point.

In the mid-game, however, a defender makes a lot of difference and pushes the group up to a point where they're fighting things they normally can't. When the defender dies, the healing/buffing/debuffing stops and the group is soon to follow since they can no longer handle the enemies they're fighting. Seeing this happen is a magnificent display of how important defenders are in the mid-game.

As for blasting: If you have better things to do than blasting, then do them, but also realize that you can only do so much buffing before it becomes wasteful. It is true that defender blasts do more than just damage, and that fact is not to be overlooked. Your priority should be defending, and sometimes using your blasts is a part of that.

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And really if u six slot what attacks you do have, the dmg isn't all that bad, ya its 2/3 blaster dmg, but most defenders can last longer than blaster's anyway

Also using classic example of buffs/debuffs, not just single targets stacking,
Accelerate Metabolism
Enervating Field
Radiation Infection
Hurricane
Freezing Rain
Dispersion Bubble
Siphon Speed( the +recharge aspect)
Siphon Power( the -dmg debuff)
Fulcram Shift( -the -dmg debuff)
Tar Patch(-resist)
Darkest Night
Shadow Fall
Steamy Mist

Ones limited by various caps, but very good when facing AV's
Lingering Rad
Snow Storm
Siphon Speed( the remaining aspects of the power)
Siphon Power(+1 dmf buff)
Fulcram Shift(+1 dmg buff)
Tar Patch(-speed)

Also on the single target buffs, it goes beyond just being able to buff each other, on some buffs, a single defender can't stack
more than one of the same buff on the same person, while multiples can( classic example are the FF shields)
Granted 8 emps will see the biggest difference when grouped together.

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that is an all defender team's effectiveness is greater than the sum of the parts

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The reason it's greater than the sum of it's parts is because a Defender doesn't get to use all of their parts.

Go through and check out how many powers a Defender has that can't be used without a team mate. A really basic example is comparing Emp and Dark. An Empath on their own can't really do anything cool, but with 8 of them in a team it gets really powerful. Lots of +Def... great status resists... +recovery... +recharge... the whole lot! On the other hand, the only thing a team of 8 Darks can really offer over a lone Dark is the stacked bonuses from Tar Patch. It's not syngery... it's dependance.

So while you may think AM is a classic example, I would say AM is the exception.

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For darks, in addition to tar patch 8 times over(doing 340% total dmg, not base dmg)
Shadowfall x8, its defense and resist stack togother
not to mention anywhere between 8 & 24 Dark Servants running about
Darkest Night, totally gimping mobs accuracy and dmg output to miniscule numbers, a team of 8 darks can be quite impressive beyond just tar patch( as a side note, the funnest 8 defender team would be 8 storms, its like watching a soccer game rather than a fight)

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While I agree there needs to be somesort of of look here, I wouldn't descibe my rad/dark medicore, nor most Dark/*, Storm/*, or Kinetic/* . My Rad/Dark did quite fine, it's just that some primaries do better at this range than others. As I stated before, I think our fundimental problem is that controllers share too many powersets with us, Just looning at the disparity, my rad/dark( now 50) had no trouble with the issue 3 bosses, I actually liked that they were tougher with the extra xp, my wife's emp/rad on the other hand......

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For the record..... I'm against nerfing. My point was that when controllers get their slots for their summom's/pet's they out power defenders huge. Where as a Defenders Cousin (the Blaster), there is a huge gap in their overall usefullness to a team.

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I don't thinks its so much nerfs are required, but rather buffing some sets such as empathy as to allow self buffs would go a long way making the 40+ game more enjoyable for everybody. The fact is defenders do have to deal with sharing a good chunk of our primaries with controllers.
Now for defenders who may have problems finding teams in the 40+range, I'd suggest:
-form your own teams, maybe all defenders, one of the major differences between an all defender team vs. all scrapper, tank or blaster teams, is that defender synergy. that is an all defender team's effectiveness is greater than the sum of the parts, while blasters, scrappers, &tank team's effectiveness is the sum of the parts. The classic example is an all Rad defender team.
-Find a good Supergroup and make a lot of friends, don't underestimate the social aspect, of the game.
-Blasters, they will always need defenders, and in some cases they will need us more, than we need them

For emps who seem to have the hardest time,
Remember Fortitude, it offers psi resist, some tanker/scrapper defenses are useless against psi, both unyeilding and invincibility are totally useless against psi foes, of which there are many both AV and non-av in the late game
I just think with emps a few don't realize they really need to change from healers to buffers in the late game. For bubblers, I thnk they would be in more demand if Force Bubble was changed into a +resist version of dispersion bubble.